CIRCLE is releasing a major new study today, “That’s Not Democracy.” How Out-of-School Youth Engage in Civic Life and What Stands in Their Way. Many practitioners informed this project, which was in collaboration with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.

A vibrant and thriving democracy requires a deeply engaged and active citizenry. “Civic engagement” encompasses all the ways we identify and understand common problems in our communities, nation, and world. Robust civic engagement not only creates healthy societies; it benefits the individuals who engage, through the development of skills and knowledge, networks and relationships, and feelings of purpose and meaning.

However, survey data show that civic engagement is highly unequal among young Americans. One of the primary divisions is between young people who have ever attended college and those who dropped out of high school or did not continue their educations beyond high school (about 42 percent of the resident youth population in 2012). National survey data show that a majority of non-college youth are basically disengaged from traditional civic life, with 37 percent completely disconnected, and only 13.5 percent engaged in forms of conventional civic leadership.

But standardized survey questions may not capture the contributions and opinions of poor and working-class youth, who may find words like volunteering and civic engagement inapplicable or confusing, even though they engage in their communities. Also, survey research is not ideal for determining why young people do or do not participate.

Thus we conducted semi-structured conversations with non-college youth to we explore why they do or do not participate. In all, we interviewed 121 non-college youth in 20 focus groups in 4 cities between fall 2008 and June 2010. Compared to the national population of non-college youth, participants in our study were much more likely to be urban and African American. Here are some of our findings:

Most participants saw concrete barriers to civic engagement. For example, they perceived that institutions did not want their engagement, that their communities provided few positive role models and that they lacked the money and connections to contribute.

Many participants believed they had skills to make a difference in their communities, but they lacked opportunities to use those skills.

Nevertheless, many participants served or helped other individuals in their own families and neighborhoods, although they did not think of these forms of helping behavior when asked about community-level change.

Participants were highly aware of social and political issues, concerned about them, and likely to discuss them critically in their own social networks, even if they did not see how they personally could address such issues.

A small minority of participants had been recruited into civic organizations, and they generally expressed strong support for these groups. Most other focus group members believed that such institutions were missing in their communities and reported never having been asked to participate.

Overall, this study finds that non-college young people lack organized and institutional opportunities to address large-scale social issues—reinforcing previous research. They often report helping individuals, and they discuss social issues in their own networks, but generally they do not connect these activities to making systemic or society-wide changes.

We offer insights into promising strategies for reengaging poor and working-class young adults. Many respondents expressed interest in education for younger people (most often their own children or siblings), including both K-12 schooling and community-based opportunities. Recruiting non-college youth into organizations that assist and improve education would be worthwhile. They felt that they owed the next generation help and guidance, and they personally valued making contributions. Opportunities to move from critical talk (which is common in their circles) to constructive collective action is the key to transforming both these individuals and their communities.

In addition, the new report offers:

An overview of national demographic and participation data for non-college youth

Findings from focus groups with a sub-set of non-college youth

Information about many of the leading organizations that civically engage non-college youth

Profiles of four organizations and their models for engaging and developing youth

Summary of other important research about what influences youth civic engagement and development

Recommendations for several constituencies, based on the above and conversations with stakeholders

Join a Twitter chat about this report on Monday, August 27th at 3pm EDT, using the hashtag #YouthTruth. Follow CIRCLE at @CivicYouth. CIRCLE is running a #YouthTruth campaign to counter myths about young Americans, such as the widespread beliefs that youth are mostly college students or that they have uniform experiences and attitudes as a generation. We’ll discuss reactions and implications from the report, answer questions and talk about what IS going on that people can support.

Why “Non-College Youth?

Studying the category defined as “non-college youth” is problematic for several reasons. First, this term is a negative definition, using a deficit as its basic criterion to describe people, even though they have knowledge, experience, and other assets.

We nevertheless see compelling reasons to focus on the non-college category. They are almost invisible in a society whose formal leaders and opinion makers usually hold college degrees. For example, reporters routinely equate college students with young people as a whole. College attendance is a powerful predictor of civic engagement, even when controlling for other factors. Finally, policies and strategies for engaging people in civic life must consider the institutions that can reach them.

Non-college young people are underrepresented in groups, meetings, projects, and elections. Their underrepresentation has grown more severe over the last four decades. Consequently, communities miss the potential contributions of large numbers of youth, and the youth miss opportunities to be nurtured and shaped into active citizens. Not only do they lose political influence and the capacity to improve their own communities, they miss the chance to develop the skills, relationships, and psychological benefits.

In fact, according to Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry (1996, p. 31), the correlation between years of school and civic engagement is “the best documented finding in American political behavior research.”

This finding derives in large part from surveys of formal civic behavior. To examine this issue more fully, qualitative investigation is also important. Non-college youth might be engaged in ways that the standard surveys overlook. Also, it is not fully evident why years of formal education should predict civic engagement. That is not the case in other countries, such as India, where low-caste and poor citizens are more likely than middle-class citizens to vote (Pushpendra, 1999). Thus, it is important to find out more about the barriers to civic engagement for Americans who have fewer years of schooling and to look for alternate paths to being engaged that do not include college.

21 Responses to ““That’s Not Democracy.” How Out-of-School Youth Engage in Civic Life and What Stands in Their Way”

[...] youth Posted on August 23, 2012 by Peter Today, CIRCLE released our study entitled “That’s Not Democracy. How Out-of-School Youth Engage in Civic Life and What Stands in Their Way.” It’s really the fruit of several years’ work, including focus groups and survey [...]

[...] friends at CIRCLE have released a new report called “That’s Not Democracy: How Out-of-School Youth Engage in Civic Life and What Stands in Their Wa…” One of the historic civic gaps has been between those who have attended college (typically [...]

[...] youth are less likely to be engaged in their communities than their non-college counterparts. But a new report from The Center For Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) finds that [...]

[...] report, this one from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, produced in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation, examines the other side of college-age [...]

[...] So are non-college-educated Millennials a lost cause? A report cited in the article says no. The CIRCLE report suggests that youth (young adults, actually) are most likely to vote if they are “personally and [...]

[...] York Times article on non-college youth: Struggling Young Adults Pose a Challenge for Campaigns. CIRCLE’s report was the impetus for the article, and Levine is quoted: “Extensive research shows that if you [...]

[...] has shown that young people get involved when asked by someone whom they trust. As we show in our recent report, sometimes not being asked sends a message to young people that their voice and participation [...]

[...] neighborhoods, police sometimes shut down other forms of civic engagement beside voting. In one of our focus groups in Baltimore, for example, a young man said, “Democracy is … where everybody has an opinion. Like [...]

[...] Neither party, as far as these citizens are concerned, has focused much attention on them. While they may seem indifferent, many of these young working-class Americans are “highly persuadable.” In fact, when they are specifically asked to participate in civic involvement, participation increases. [...]